HTC confirmed yesterday that its President of Smartphone and Connected Devices Business Chialin Chang has left the company effective immediately. The company didn’t say if it’s going to hire a replacement and if a new report is to be believed, it may not need to. The report suggests that HTC is actually going to merge its virtual reality and smartphone divisions.
The future of HTC’s smartphone division, what’s left of it anyway, remains unclear. The company hasn’t been performing well in the market at all and its recent decision to sell much of its smartphone division to Google has some speculating that HTC’s upcoming flagship might be its last.
While that remains to be seen, a report out of China claims that HTC is going to merge its virtual reality and smartphone divisions. Five general managers, most of whom looked after various functions in the VR division, will reportedly be taking leading positions in the combined division going forward.
The promotion of executives that were primarily involved with its VR efforts to positions of greater power suggests that HTC might pivot from being a smartphone-first company to a VR-first company. That’s really not going to surprise a lot of people as they believe this was the writing on the wall.
Whether or not this is true remains to be seen. HTC hasn’t commented on the matter as yet and we’ll update you if and when it does.
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